


Room

by 1780AWintersBall



Series: One Chapter, One Story [4]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: F/M, I wrote Hamilton with a weak psych whoops, I'm sorry people, M/M, Misery, Mostly Jefferson's perspective, Room (Hamilton's Writings), Slow Build to Insanity, Sorry Not Sorry, Stephen King - Freeform, There's a short prologue and epilogue, hah
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-17
Updated: 2017-11-17
Packaged: 2019-02-03 15:55:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12751479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1780AWintersBall/pseuds/1780AWintersBall
Summary: James Reynolds has had enough and sticks Hamilton and Jefferson in a room together to rot and die. Hamilton slowly goes insane and stays awake while Jefferson tries to stay alive.





	Room

**Prologue**

 

If anyone saw the creation of the little white room out in the middle of Nowhere, Notown, Noplace and thought that it was a grand idea, they probably would have been shunned for being crazy.

  It was literally all that it was named, little, painted completely white, inside and out, and a room. There was nothing in it, no furniture, no light fixtures like lamps, no decoration. It had four walls, a floor, a ceiling, and nothing else, bar the needed fluorescent tube lights embedded deep into the ceiling, to give it light.

  Someone, however, discovered that room once again. That someone, who had run from his life, disappeared off the grid, and stumbled across the little white room in the middle of Death-by-Dehydration, was named James Reynolds. This man had nothing, really, to lose. He’d lost his wife, who he’d used against a powerful politician to get money, he’d lost his home, which had stayed with his wife, he’d lost any money he had had buying gas for a car that had broken down a couple hundred whatevers from the little white room, and he’d lost any sense of direction.

  He then stood only a step away from the little white room when he’d noticed it. It brought over him a sense of relief, and he hoped that the room had water inside. He went around the room, looking for an entrance, but found none.

  Then, he tried pushing on the walls, and the most extraordinary thing happened. The wall collapsed inside! He pushed more into the wall, and it formed a door-like entrance. Entranced, he walked inside, awe building up inside him, and realised that he’d walked into the most useless room that could have possibly graced the earth. There was nothing inside, save the smell of paint left over from however long ago the little white room had been built.

  Smacking his chapped lips together, James figured that inside the little white room, there was nothing for him. So, before the wall-door closed on him, trapping him inside the room forever, he walked outside of the room, and ran around it’s perimeter, hoping and praying that the room itself was a joke hiding a fabulous secret.

  As he started to lose hope, his mind going over the thousands of scenarios of excruciating death that starvation, sleep deprivation and dehydration brought, his foot caught on something ( _ probably a rock or snake _ , he thought), and he fell face first into the bit of planet Earth underneath him.

  Except, for some strange reason, he didn’t.

  Instead, he fell face first into another room, this one filled to the brim with technology and electrical life. There were flashing lights, beeps and pops, electrical charges and cords, huge computer databases, tiny, flat laptops, and a huge, flat screen covering most of one wall that showed the little white room’s interior in all it’s barren glory. But the thing that caught James’s eye the most was the huge glass of fresh water, a freshly baked dinner, ready to eat, and a brand new car that James couldn’t name.

  James was overjoyed to find this perfect, life-sustaining room, and immediately thought of what he could do if he could actually get back to where he had come, and seek revenge on the people he thought had wronged him. An evil, cruel look crossed his face, and he looked back up at the hole in which he’d fallen through to end up in this heaven. He knew exactly who he was going to strike back at, and he knew just how to do it.

 

* * *

 

**Room (Hamilton’s Writings)**

 

Alexander Hamilton was having a wonderfully good sleep, the best he’d had in awhile, right beside his wonderful, beautiful, intelligent, caring wife, Elizabeth Hamilton, after having tucked all of their kids into bed. It might have been strange to some people that then, in the 21st century, the Hamiltons had eight children, but neither Hamilton nor Eliza had cared, so there wasn’t much of an issue.

  Thus, when he was rudely awoken by a knocking issuing from the door (as Hamilton was a light sleeper), he sighed and very,  _ very _ reluctantly got out of bed. Whomever was knocking must have an excellent reason as to why they were at Hamilton’s door in the middle of the night, interrupting a perfect slumber.

  Hamilton quietly soothed his wife into a calm sleep after she’d woken up slightly to ask where he was going, then dressed quickly, wanting to still be presentable. There were some things he would never stray from, and one of those things was public appearance. Even if Hamilton was to slam the door in this person’s face, at least they would know that Hamilton’s style was impeccable, and a rival to every and any fashion designer.

  He eventually got to the door, where the knocker had knocked on the knocker a whole five times, somehow not waking up anyone else in the Hamilton household. Hamilton grumbled something about his children being mistaken for corpses once during a school-wide game of Graveyard, having actually just fallen asleep.

  Finally, Hamilton put all of his tired anger into opening the door with as much gusto as he thought necessary, and said, in a very clear and annoyed voice, “Why are you at my door at such an obscene time and what ever could you need at this hour?”

  The man at the door (for it most likely wasn’t a woman, there was Ax body cologne radiating in waves off of them) had a very big, black hood covering his face, connected to a very big, black sweater, and during the witching hour, there was no street lights on, making any hope of glancing the man’s features quite below zero.

  “Ah, Mr. Hamilton,” said the man, his voice a tenor, with a slight gravelly sound, “I’m so glad I found you. I would like it if you could come with me, please.”

  Hamilton frowned, the motion creasing his forehead. “What do you need me for? Whatever it is, I’m quite certain that you can ask me of it from my door. Besides, I don’t even know you, why should I come with you, man?”

  With a slight chuckle, the man reached out a gloved hand and gripped Hamilton’s arm, holding it in a vice-like squeeze, cutting the circulation off very effectively. Hamilton yelped, and attempted to draw back, run into his home, do  _ anything _ , but the man’s grip was impeccable and unyielding, only getting tighter around his arm.

  “You should come with me because I have someplace I think you should stay for the rest of your life, and besides, you won’t be alone. You’ll have a… pal, to stay with you. You two can rot together.”

  With the force of what felt like fifty elephants colliding with his skull, Hamilton was hit over the head with a very beautifully decorated baseball bat, signed by all the famous players. He slumped over, and the man picked him up off the door frame to his house. As he leaned sideways and inside the modest home, closing the door and locking it for Eliza’s sake, the hood slipped off the man’s head, revealing James Reynolds’s head, his hair grown out and scraggly, a bit of a beard coming along.

  He grinned down at Hamilton’s unconscious form, then dragged him over to his van, leaving his now-bloodied baseball bat as a gift to the kidnapped man’s children and wife. Opening the door, he quickly silenced the other occupant of the van, a bound and gagged Thomas Jefferson from the illustrious Jefferson family, with a smack over the head using a pipe he had stored in the van. He placed Hamilton beside Jefferson, wanting to see the irony of how both men were going to the same place, having come from two very different worlds.

  And with that, Reynolds took off towards the little white room, very proud of what he was about to do, very proud of his amazing, flawless revenge plan. Nothing,  _ nothing _ , could ever make this plan go sour.

~

The next time Hamilton awoke, he groaned very loudly, wanting to make it known to anyone and everyone that he had a headache and he was in pain. His groan was simply met with another, equally disatisfied groan, forcing Hamilton to dominate that groan with his own. This was obviously a battle of manly power, a War of Groans, and Hamilton, even though he hadn’t even opened his eyes yet, his cheek against some cold surface that his body had yet to identify, was determined to win this war.

  The odd battle of nerve-grating noises soon became verbal. “Would you just shut up, I have a very serious and very, very painful migraine, you dolt!” cried the other person.

  “Well, how was I supposed to know, you’re just trying to bash down my obviously superior, masculine groans with your own, you unfiltered, weak-groaning idiot!” Hamilton cried back.

  “Well, whoever you are, as I haven’t sat up yet to see you, nor do I care to, just be quiet for a few seconds,  _ please _ . It’s not the end of the world if you don’t get your two cents in, you know.”

  Finally, with annoyance bubbling up inside him like a boiling pot of water, if water could be annoyed, Hamilton opened his eyes and sat up, unintentionally emitting a groan from the overwhelming pain that flooded across his body, as though he’d just been through a bumpy ride in a tin box with no padding.

  The other person seemed to do the same, and for a second, they just stared at each other. Then, realising just who they were staring at, the two men cried out the other’s name at the exact same time.

  “Jefferson?!”

  “Hamilton?!”

  Jefferson was the first to recover. “Did you kidnap me? Is this some screwed-up idea that you came up with to try and get me to sign your stupid financial plan? Because let me tell you right now, you uncultured swine, I’m not going to, no matter how you decide to torture me!”

  Hamilton stared at Jefferson incredulously, then cried, “Are you serious?! That’s what you think of when you wake up in… in… here, wherever we are, with me? You’re even more stupid than I thought, I guess.”

  As Jefferson spit back a mildly long retort that Hamilton didn’t care to listen to, Hamilton looked around. He discovered, by  _ complete _ and  _ focused _ observation on his part, that they were trapped in a perfectly white room with nothing save himself and Jefferson in it. He also discovered, by a  _ miracle _ of total and unadulterated attention, that there was absolutely no exits to the small box of a white room that Hamilton found himself trapped in with Jefferson.

  It seemed that Jefferson made these  _ astounding _ and  _ complex _ discoveries as well, having closed his mouth and actually looked around, like Hamilton had.

  “You know,” Hamilton announced, “I think we’re alone and I think we’re trapped in here together.”

  “You think?” Jefferson sneered in response. “I wonder what could have possibly brought you to that conclusion.”

  “Well, you don't have to be a jerk about it,” said Hamilton, glaring at Jefferson. He then stood up, so he was, for once, taller than the fluffy-haired, magnet and velvet-covered man.

  Jefferson ignored Hamilton’s comment, leaned back on his hands, and said, “I think I’m going to continue my nap. If you can somehow magically produce Advil and a glass of water, I might consider you at least a relatively okay human being.”

  “Oh, wow, thanks, those are such high goals that I actually really want to achieve,” drawled Hamilton sarcastically.

  He made his way to the wall, then, while Jefferson layed back down, and pushed on said wall, trying to open it like a magical portal. Jefferson sighed, then turned away from Hamilton, knowing full well that he’d be doing the same thing in his political rival’s place if he were alone.

  Hamilton tried pushing on every section of the wall, with growing fervour and anxiety, suddenly realising that the white box meant. Hamilton was stuck in a box with Thomas freaking Jefferson for an indeterminable amount of time without any form of outside contact,  _ at all _ . There was nothing he could do to reach out to the outside world.

  He feverishly patted down his pockets on his suit, searching for a phone, a note pad, a pencil, a piece of lint,  _ anything _ , but found nothing. He then rushed over to Jefferson and started patting him down. Jefferson made a very loud, indignant noise, not liking being randomly patted down by his enemy, jumping up off the floor from his perfectly good napping section, and said, “What the heck do you think you’re doing?”

  “I’m checking you for a phone, or anything, that we could contact someone with,” said Hamilton with growing anxiety, his voice pitch becoming higher and higher than it’s regular tone.

  Jefferson just realised Hamilton was on the verge of a panic attack and figured that being trapped in a room with an anxious, horrified, breaking-down-into-pieces Hamilton was way worse than being trapped in a room with an angrily screaming, workaholic, up-all-night Hamilton.

  He jumped into action, sitting the hyperventilating man on the floor and looking him right in the eyes, putting both hands on both of his shoulders. “Hey, hey, it’s alright, we’re going to be alright. Hey, look at me, Hamilton. Deep breath in, one, two, three, deep breath out, one, two, three. In, one, two, three, out, one, two, three. There we go. Are you afraid of small spaces?”

  Hamilton looked to be on the verge of tears as he shakily shook his head. “N-no, but i-if I don’t get back, my w-wife, Eliza, sh-she’ll think I abandoned her, I-I- that’s what my f-father did, I can’t have that, my children, what’ll… what’ll they think? A-and I, I can’t be remembered i-if I’m stuck in a b-box, and we don’t know where we are, and w-we were kidnapped, there's no way out, w-we have no way to contact anyone, and, and, and-”

  “Hamilton, it’s okay, you’re okay, relax,” said Jefferson gently. “Now, you’re scared you can’t get out, right? You’re worried about your wife and kids, what’s on the outside now that we’re removed from it?”

  Hamilton nodded.

  Jefferson looked around again, pulling Hamilton into a rather violent, forced hug against his chest, though Hamilton didn’t resist, and once again realised that there was no windows. There was no way to look out onto the world, and they had no idea where they were.

  “Just… just remember that you’re not alone, that I’m here too,” said Jefferson, hoping that helped, “and whatever happens, we’ll face it together, okay? Neither of us will be alone, neither of us have any real reason to panic, not yet, not now, hopefully not ever. Okay?”

  Hamilton nodded, and with that being said, Jefferson tried not to panic and be a rock for Hamilton (who almost always seemed on the verge of a mental breakdown anyways with the amount of work he did). Instead of breaking down, he put his mind to rationalizing. He remembered something on the news about a useless white room out in the middle of nowhere that was built just for the sake of being built. That random white room was probably where they were right then.

  Then, Jefferson started trying to figure out distances and times. For the most part, Jefferson had been knocked out, creating the killer headache he now harboured, same as Hamilton. But, he’d woken up at Hamilton’s house, and he knew the distance between his own house and Hamilton’s, having been ranted at whenever Hamilton had to visit Monticello for a business meeting.

  So, piecing that together, Jefferson was pretty sure he had a rough estimate on where Hamilton and himself were. That was good, that helped quell some of the pressurizing panic that had started to build in his own chest. He figured that if he and Hamilton were pronounced missing on official reports, and people started searching for them, this little white room was going to be on the radar for places that the FBI would look.

  In the meantime, though, Jefferson and Hamilton had to figure out ways to actually ‘live’ together. Although Hamilton was breaking down in Jefferson’s arms, while Jefferson tried to and gradually did sooth him, Jefferson knew that the kind atmosphere between them was never going to last for any extended period of time.

  Soon, finally, Hamilton sobered up from his anxiety, and he became determined. He seemed to have calculated the same things as Jefferson, and became very prepared to go to war with the very air inside the room, so long as he had something to do.

  “I don’t have any  _ pencils _ !” roared Hamilton angrily from across the room while he stood defiantly in front of one of the four walls, as though the lack of any form of writing utensil, be it pencil or otherwise, was the worst of his problems.

  “And you expect me to care why?” asked Jefferson from his wonderful leaning spot against the wall, opposite Hamilton in the room. The little white room had to have been only fourteen long strides from wall to wall, the corners being the longest distance. It was a perfect square, and it infuriated Jefferson.

  “With all this blank expanse, we could very easily write several things, and finish plenty of projects, but there’s nothing to  _ do _ that with!” Hamilton cried back, wishing that the whole world would end so that he didn’t have to suffer being pencil-less for any longer. It was truly the ultimate hell, not to have a pencil in his hand with so much writing space.

  Jefferson rolled his eyes, then said, “Have you tried your inside pockets? And your pockets inside your inside pockets? Because if not, then I’d rather like to hear you be quiet while you occupy yourself with searching, m-kay?”

  Hamilton drew in a quick inhalation of breath, then whispered, “I have not, in fact, checked those pockets…!” and proceeded thusly with checking those pockets.

  There was then a grand victory outcry as Hamilton held forth a wonderful, full mechanical pencil, complete with it’s eraser still fully and intact. Jefferson whistled, then clapped, granting Hamilton his small victory. Hamilton beamed over at Jefferson, and did a little mock bow, then proceeded to celebrate in the discovery of a pencil by using it.

~

Jefferson started to become tired by Hamilton’s scratching on the walls, and looked up from the floor when the scratching stopped with a snap and an annoyed exclamation of almost-defeat.

  “Darn it, my lead broke! Hey Jefferson, would you happen to have extra lead? I’m not sure how full this pencil is, and I don’t want to risk anything, you know? It would be very bad if we ran out of lead.”

  Jefferson sighed, making a show of rolling his eyes to show how much he truly didn’t care about Hamilton’s predicament. “No, Hamilton, why would I have lead? I’m not like you, I don’t carry around an indefinite amount of writing tools.”

  “What’s your excuse?” snapped Hamilton, turning from his writing on the wall. “You don’t have the  _ wherewithal _ to get nice mechanical pencils and lead? Because I’m fairly certain that a rich prick like you will always have the wherewithal to buy mechanical pencils and lead, probably even ones that are pre-leaded.”

  “I  _ do _ , in fact, have the wherewithal,” Jefferson snapped back, “I just choose not to act the crazy person. I leave my writing things at my desks, like a normal human being. It makes it easier to find things, and lets me keep my sanity, instead of writing on the walls the first chance I’m taken out of society.”

  “You’re an idiot, Jefferson,” quipped Hamilton, “you couldn’t see the point to having a writing tool with you all day even if the point was biting you in the butt. You’re becoming senile, old man.”

  Jefferson gasped, putting a hand to his chest. “How dare you! I am not becoming senile, I’m simply not buying up half of Staples! Just because you have a legacy issue and are going to write down every last thought in your head until death steals your last breath in this cramped, isolated white room doesn’t mean I have to copy you, you madman!”

  There was an angry silence, then Hamilton turned back towards the wall and continued to write, the sound of his mechanical pencil a constant sound, grounding both of them to reality. Jefferson sunk down on the wall, bending his back to make his position more comfortable, then closed his eyes, giving into his exhaustion. He only half realised that the lights inside the little white room never,  _ ever _ turned off, even during what he assumed was night.

~

Jefferson woke up once again to the sound of scratching on the wall, this time with the sound a lot more fast and frantic, as though the writer was running out of time. He opened his eyes and was horrified on what he saw.

  Hamilton’s writing had become more spastic and crazy, the lead being more ingrained into the wall and making the letters darker than they had been before (he must have found a lead container in his pocket, for that harsh a treatment on lead would have made him use it all up). He’d apparently looked over his previous writings, thinking them to be inadequate in describing what he was thinking and feeling, so added arrows and words to sentences. Some of the words were bigger and scribbled, as though Hamilton had wanted to get them out and onto the wall, not wanting to keep what the word said within this mind any longer. There was also quite a few large smudges where Hamilton had tried to erase the lead from the wall, smudging the mistake words instead.

  He continued to write, even then, and Jefferson wondered if he’d even attempted to sleep. It must have been at least twenty-four hours since they were kidnapped, unless Jefferson’s internal clock was quite off. That mean night had come and gone, and the time for sleep was only just ending.

  Jefferson glanced at Hamilton’s words, reading over them quickly, and gasped imperceptibly. Hamilton had written relatively normal things at the beginning of his scratchings, even with his added things he’d put in. Most of it was old projects he’d memorized that he considered needing to be finished for Washington, and some of it was small proclamations of love to his beloved Eliza. But over what felt like night, his writings became more frantic and scared. He wrote about being alone, being the only one awake, being scared to wake up Jefferson and scared of the humiliation he’d feel if Jefferson laughed at him about his paranoia. He wrote about nightmares and his worst fears, like strong storms and cold, wet, sick-stained beds. He wrote about thinking Jefferson was dead, and feeling like he truly was left alone, in the little white room in the middle of nowhere.

  So far, however, all of Hamilton’s writings were confined to one wall, though Jefferson was pretty sure the cleanliness of the other walls and floor wasn’t going to stay.

  Jefferson immediately sat up and cleared his throat, feeling like he was reading someone’s deepest, darkest emotions. Hamilton jumped, dropping his pencil with a clatter and creating a smudge of lead on the wall. Jefferson got up from the ground, and made his way over to Hamilton, wanting the other man to know that he wasn’t alone.

  “Hey, Hamilton, you know I’m not dead yet, right? It’ll take a lot more than that to kill me, you should know,” said Jefferson, trying his best to be comforting to his political rival.

  “N-no, I didn’t… didn’t know,” mumbled Hamilton, seemingly embarrassed by his chicken scratch diary. He leaned down to pick up his pencil, and Jefferson read what the smaller man had just wrote.

_ Dear Eliza, someone, humanity, or anyone out there, hopefully this gets read one day. I'm pretty sure Jefferson has passed on, as I’ve written before. I’m not sure how well I can handle this room without him, he’s the only semblance of normal life left in this barren, blank room, and I hate this room already. I hate how I’m already breaking down, even if it’s only been what I can only assume to be one day. There’s no door, and my pencil hasn’t found a hole or anything that I could make bigger to try and get out of here with. One day, I hope, I will see the light of the beautiful morning sun, and be able to see my wonderful wife and children again. Until then, I hope I don’t starve. I [smudge] _

  Jefferson’s brow creased with worry as Hamilton straightened up again, facing Jefferson, a slight blush on his face and his pencil in hand. “Well, don’t you have things to do too?”

  Jefferson let out a forced chuckle, then said tightly, “Not really. We’re stuck in this room and I didn’t bring anything. If I’d’ve known, I would’ve brought my GameBoy.”

  Hamilton let out one singular bark of laughter, an almost insane sound, and said, “You had a GameBoy? I never even heard of those things until I got to work with Washington in the White House. My island didn’t have an electronic store, we didn’t even have phones.”

  Smiling slightly, Jefferson joked, “Hooligans, the whole lot of you! No wonder you turned out like such a Gremlin, never being in touch with any electronics will make you like that!”

  Hamilton faked an offended look, then turned back to his wall of writing again. “So... so far, I’ve finished some of the more laid-back projects that Washington gave me, but there was that more pressing one that he gave to the both of us, and I was wondering if you could tell me what your part of it entailed. I feel like it would impress Washington if he knew that I finished all the assignments and then some while here.”

  Jefferson scoffed a bit, heading back to his half of the room (for they had subconsciously divided the room into two parts, not that Hamilton would obey the imaginary lines in the theoretical sand). “I am not working whilst on vacation, and you always hand in your projects two months before they’re even needed, so he won't even be all that impressed.”

  “Some vacation,” sighed Hamilton, sitting down to write on the bottom of the wall.

  The room fell into silence once again, and Jefferson found himself drifting off again. He didn’t fight it, and soon enough, the sweet release of sleep overwhelmed his senses, backed with the surprisingly calming sound of Hamilton’s pencil.

~

Jefferson awoke to the sound of Hamilton groaning on the floor. There was a certain note to it that made Jefferson know that it wasn’t just a groan to get him to notice Hamilton, but a groan of actual, real pain.

  Jefferson opened his eyes and found that Hamilton was laying on his side clutching his stomach, his pencil disregarded on the floor near his arms. His entire body language screamed stomach ache, and Jefferson quickly crawled over to the other man, wanting to stop his groans.

  “Woah, woah, Hamilton, are you okay?” Jefferson asked with anxiety. He didn’t want the only other human being in his entire, tiny new white world to die just yet, and it seem that that was exactly what was about to happen.

  Another groan from Hamilton, then he whispered, “W-we… before I was… t-taken, we… Eliza a-an’ I… went for seafood… raw fish…”

  “Ah,” sighed Jefferson. Then he paused, and said, “Wouldn’t that have affected you sooner, like the night we got taken? Usually that type of thing hits hard and fast.”

  Hamilton shrugged slightly, eliciting a full-body reaction as he attempted to shrink in on himself, trying to make the pain in his stomach go away. He must have been trying very, very hard to keep from throwing up, but his body seemed to be trying to revolt, with almost caterpillar-like movements going from his abdomen to his head. Any skin that Jefferson could see was covered in goosebumps, and Jefferson only shivered at the thought of what Hamilton must have been going through.

  He finally said, “Hey, why don’t we use our coats as a combined cover-up. You’ll obviously need someplace to heave without stinking up this small room, and sooner or later one of us will need to use the bathroom. Are you okay with that? Just give me a nod or something.”

  Hamilton slowly and shakily nodded, shivers going up and down his body, and Jefferson quickly stripped the two of them of their jackets, placing them inside-out in the corner. He then gently stood Hamilton up and moved him over to the jackets. Turning away, he tuned out the noises Hamilton made, not wanting to vomit himself.

  Instead, he moved over to Hamilton’s wall of writing and picked up the pencil from the floor. Standing in front of the wall, he looked up and around it, searching for where Hamilton had last stopped writing to double over in pain. He found it near a larger word in the center, where most of the words stemmed like a word web. He traced where the sentence most likely would have travelled if Hamilton had worked on it, and added his own diary entry to it.

_ Dear… _

  Jefferson didn’t know who Hamilton was addressing in most of his writings, so he looked back into the heart of the spidery web of words. After a few seconds of observing, he realised who most of the writings were addressed to.

_ Dear Eliza, Washington, and Burr, we’re both really hoping we get to see you again. This time, if you can’t tell by the change in writing, it’s Thomas Jefferson writing. Hamilton has gotten sick in the corner over our jackets because of some raw fish he ate before being taken. You would have thought the sickness would have hit sooner, but maybe Hamilton’s just really good at hiding his flu. _

_   This room has been the least entertaining thing in the entire world. I wish there were at least some windows so that we could see something of the outside, but this room really stands up to it’s name, the little white room. _

_    ~~Eliza~~ Mrs. Hamilton, I’m so sorry I couldn’t bring back your husband. My own wife died before I became Secretary of State, and so I’m unable to completely sympathise with either you or your husband’s pain of being separated, but I completely understand that feeling of loss you must be experiencing. I wish with all my heart that we could be back in the outside world, doing our duties and fulfilling our places in the world, but whoever decided it was a good idea to pluck us from our homes must have targeted us for a reason. _

_   It would be wonderful if there was a mini drug mart in this room, because Hamilton’s heaving has reached the point of no ignoring, and my own empty stomach is rebelling against me. I might want to stop writing, but I can understand how Hamilton found it so therapeutic. I hope one day you all get to read these writings, if only for our sanities. _

  Jefferson thought about signing off with his name, but thought if felt too much like a will. Eventually, he simply put the pencil down, and went back over to Hamilton.

  He seemed to be getting better; the vomiting had ceased for a moment. Jefferson really hoped and prayed that Hamilton didn’t bring up all of his bodily fluids, as they didn’t have any water, and he didn’t want Hamilton to leave this planet before he did. Hopefully, neither of them would have to die here.

~

Jefferson and Hamilton had found, way in the corner adjacent to the bathroom corner, that there was a water spot. It seemed to be the tiniest of holes, where outside water leaked in, slowly dripping down the wall to the floor. Hamilton swore he didn’t see it in his thorough sweep of the room while Jefferson was asleep, and Jefferson was inclined to believe him. He hadn’t noticed the hole either.

  “Hey, Hamilton,” Jefferson mused, standing back and letting the other man drink from the corner (both men were very, very sure that the room was spectacularly clean, without even a speck of dust on the floor), “how do you think we’re going to be keeping this water, huh? We’ll need some way of holding it, if only for more efficient way to drink it.”

  Hamilton paused in his lapping up of the water, and turned towards Jefferson. “Are you implying that you are so above using your hands? It’s not hard to make a cup out of your fingers, you know.”

  “Yes, I know, Hamilton,” sighed Jefferson, “I’m just saying that it’d be easier if we had something to actually contain the water in. Instead of your hands, which don’t hold water all that well anyways.”

  Hamilton snorted, then went back to the water, as Jefferson turned towards the writing wall. They’d made it bigger, together, and it had become an almost therapy thing. The wall was becoming too tight for the pair of men’s writing, and Jefferson was quite sure that Hamilton was going to start writing on another wall soon.

  From Jefferson and Hamilton’s combined thoughts of skewed time, it had been at least two-three days since they were kidnapped and taken straight from their front doorsteps. Somehow, Hamilton hadn’t had a wink of sleep, while Jefferson kept up his regular routine of naps every couple of hours. It helped him keep his head screwed on straight, but it seemed Hamilton was starting to lose it. Between the utter lack of outside communication, which really did a number on the poor man, and the sleep deprivation, Hamilton and his writing was starting to become unhinged.

  Staring at the wall, and at where Hamilton had already started to attempt the wall jump, he called, “Where do you not want me to write?”

  “I’d like to be the first one to write on other walls, so save that for me, but as long as you’re not cutting off an idea or jumping a sentence, you can write anywhere,” Hamilton called back.

  Jefferson had discovered early on that Hamilton, when it came to writing on walls, had territorial issues, and he’s almost strangled Jefferson over a section that had, as he said, ‘cut off a sentence’. Jefferson had actually started to fear for his safety after than, as Hamilton’s hands around his neck had not been a pleasant sensation, and he strove to never have to deal with it again.

  With that in mind, as he lightly rubbed his collarbone, he picked up the pencil from its designated spot on the floor (they’d found that putting the pencil just anywhere was disastrous, as both of them lost track of where it went, and so had drawn a special, pencil-shaped oval on the floor for it to be placed whenever neither was writing) and began to write, away from Hamilton’s newest set of words. Nothing either of them wrote was super exciting, though sometimes Hamilton’s feaverish words brought a strike of fear into Jefferson’s heart when he read what they said. Jefferson, at least, didn’t have all too much to say, and he kept repeating what he’d written previously, hoping and praying for someone to find the pair of them.

  It was a small hope, but Jefferson believed that if you held onto a dream for long enough and with enough determination, it’d come to pass.

~

After what felt like about a week, maybe a week and a half, Jefferson started waking up to Hamilton beside him, scribbling something on the floor or (rarely) actually napping on him. He took pride in the fact that Hamilton, the schizophrenic, almost completely unhinged man he’d become, trusted him enough to actually sleep next to him, even if it was only for a very short time. Hamilton had become so jumpy that it was a wonder he didn't try and snap Jefferson’s neck yet by accident. The amount of time Hamilton spent with his eyes actually closed was not nearly enough for him to function, as each passing minute held his mutterings and scratches of lead against the white room.

  The poor man had also kept his fever that he’d gained from his food poisoning, and Jefferson worried that, without the proper medical treatment, the illness would become worse. He hoped that if they were found, the first things the people would do would be treating Hamilton’s mounting illness. The bathroom corner, at least, was not getting the better end of Hamilton’s upset stomach.

  Hamilton’s writing had finally filled up the first wall, half of another wall, and was starting to take up a whole corner of the floor. It was scary, really, to see how fervently he wrote, and what he wrote about. Jefferson had stopped looking over the man’s writing, in fear of losing his own sanity just by looking at it. The last time he read a paragraph, he was almost convinced about what he’d wrote, which was that the room itself had thoughts and feelings, and was trying to kill him, slowly but surely. Almost, but not quite.

  The water hole had started to let out enough water for Hamilton and Jefferson to collect in a process they called the ‘Drip Test’. They had taken off their waist jackets, now only wearing their white undershirts, and had lain them down in a semicircle around the corner base, where the dripped water collected. They then waited until enough water soaked into the waist jackets that they could squeeze what they could from them into their mouths, effectively giving them a full glass of water every four squeezes. It worked, and Jefferson couldn’t think of a better way to drink the water, so they stuck with it.

  Eventually, during that maybe-fourteenth-maybe-sixth day, Hamilton just collapsed onto a wall, smudging some of his newly-written words. Jefferson ran to him, not wanting him to be dead but not really thinking of any other reason as to why Hamilton collapsed.

  “Hamilton!  _ Hamilton! _ Hamilton, can you-  _ ALEXANDER! _ ” Jefferson cried, holding Hamilton's limp form in his arms.

  Hamilton’s eyelids fluttered, and his mouth started moving with unintelligible words, and Jefferson sighed in relief. He was just asleep, just asleep. For all the world, Jefferson knew that he could not and would not stand Hamilton dying on him.

  Jefferson dragged Hamilton over to the opposite side of the room, away from their scribblings, away from Hamilton’s insane writings, and laid him down on the floor. His stomach hurt, more than he could ever believe (as growing up in a rich Virginian family brought you the comforts of always having food) and as he bent over Hamilton, making sure his undershirt was perfectly straight, according to his OCD, a very loud growl issued forth from it, making him hold it with a moan through clenched teeth.

  Whoever took them from their homes, from their lives, better be darned satisfied, for they were certainly doing damage to both Jefferson and Hamilton. Jefferson swore to himself that, if he ever met the person who was putting him and Hamilton through this hell, he’d make sure they paid.

~

Hamilton woke up again after what felt like an eternity to Jefferson. The latter had lost any and all sense of time, filling his hunger-panged seconds with scribbling down his discomfort onto a random section of the floor. Jefferson was so overwhelmingly relieved, and he didn’t let Hamilton so much as stand up until he was very much sure that he was okay.

  Both of their hunger was at an all-time low, even for Hamilton, who had suffered starvation on the streets before. He said it was a lot more easier to deal with when he had had a proper amount of sleep, even though Jefferson was getting enough sleep and it still felt agonizing.

  Jefferson wished for all the world that someone would just  _ hurry up and find them, darn it _ as Hamilton’s scratching on the walls hit a high in frantic frequency. Jefferson tried to tune it out with any possible means, i.e. reading his own writings or attempting to use the washroom, but to no avail, eventually settling with battling the noise with a noise of his own.

  With his mouth half open, he started to produce one long, unending, high note from the back of his throat, a high whine that sounded more like a songbird stuck on repeat.

  Hamilton’s scratching stopped for a fraction of a second, as though startled by the noise, then continued writing, trying to overpower Jefferson’s unending whine. They battled each other for what felt like hours, until Hamilton had to back off due to his lead breaking. Jefferson, with a satisfied snort, shifted down the wall where he had leaned, settling down and falling into another nap.

  He only just heard Hamilton reload his pencil with lead, then continue writing, with the same intensity and scary speed that he had just been using as he gave into the darkness.

~

Jefferson awoke to scratching beside his ear, and woke up to Hamilton writing right beside Jefferson’s head. With a yelp, Jefferson jumped up from where he had been, then glared at Hamilton.

  “I thought we made an agreement as to never write near one of us if the other is sleeping!” he cried indignantly, bouncing on the balls of his feet to keep his energy from going anywhere. His stomach hurt, and he didn’t want to do anything to make it hurt more.

  “That would imply you were sleeping,” responded Hamilton, staring unblinkingly at Jefferson with a slight crease of his brow, “and you were simply napping. I don’t see the problem.”

  Jefferson raised his eyebrows, then proceeded to look around. He was struck with a sense of gruesome awe, as he realised that Hamilton had succeeded in covering every square inch of wall and floor, except where Jefferson had been napping, with words. He looked back at Hamilton, back into his rather bloodshot eyes, and the way his demeanor spoke of pure tiredness.

  “You need to sleep,” he said simply.

  Hamilton finally blinked owlishly at Jefferson, then shook his head. “No, I’m not tired. I have things to do, I need to keep writing. They’ll never know unless I write it down.”

  “Well the black bags under your eyes would beg to differ,” said Jefferson smartly, straightening out his undershirt from the cuffs and bottom. “You need sleep, or you’re going to collapse again.”

  “So you admit it, huh?” asked Hamilton in a thinking-out-loud sort of way.

  “Hm? What do you mean?”

  “You admit to wanting me to pass out? You want me out of the way, so you can… can do something, right? You want me out of the way so you can escape. Well, I’ll simply never pass out. I’m like a duracell battery, I’ll never run out of power.”

  Hamilton’s even, unbreaking tone, filled to the brim of pure belief in his own words shocked Jefferson, as he took in what Hamilton had just said. Jefferson spluttered for a few seconds, then finally came out with, “W-whatever do you mean?”

  Hamilton, seemingly done with the conversation, turned away from Jefferson, and continued to scribble, now moving into the space where Jefferson had previously lain.

  Jefferson once again looked around, and was horrified to see the words that covered every surface. They were like a hidden evil, a shadow lying in wait, watching for it’s perfect moment to pounce and destroy. He lifted one foot to reveal yet more words, and he hopped around the room, attempting to avoid touching the words, even though he knew it was a lost cause. It was almost like they hurt, like they were burning into his skin, even through his shoes. He had to get away from them, had to run, to scream, get away  _ get away _ -

  There was an odd noise that took all of Jefferson’s attention away from the horrible words that surrounded him on all sides. It was a light  _ tap-tap-tapping _ coming from the original wall where Hamilton’s writings had sprung, and it was a sound coming from outside. From  _ outside _ .

  Hamilton slowly turned around, dropping his pencil, staring at the spot where the tapping was coming from. That was it, he must have finally lost it, he was now not only hearing voices, but hearing sounds from the outside, too. But when he glanced over to Jefferson, he saw that the other man had heard it too.

  That gave him something he hadn’t truly felt since he started his fervent scribblings. It gave him a sense of total, undeniable, true  _ hope _ . There was someone out there, and they were  _ there. Hope. _

  Immediately, engulfed in a total and controlling need to  _ get out _ , Hamilton dived towards the noisy wall, and banged his response back on the wall. He needed that someone to let him  _ out _ , let him  _ go _ , let him back into the world and  _ out out out _ -

  The wall was silent to his desperate bangings, and Jefferson soon tried to pull Hamilton away, kicking and screaming. The floor words were starting it get smudged, but Jefferson figured that they were still readable.

  Then the most remarkable thing happened. The wall simply… opened. It split in the center, cutting whole words and sentences into two clean halves. It was like a door to heaven was opening up, both men held captive in the sight of  _ real light _ flooding into the little white room. Only then did the very back part of Jefferson’s mind really realise just how pale Hamilton and himself were.

  There, in the middle of the doorway, stood a person. A real, life human being, from the  _ outside _ , actually standing in a doorway to the  _ outside world _ . In a split second, Jefferson and Hamilton’s minds figured out just what that meant.

  They both jumped into action, racing neck and neck to the doorway, horrified of the prospect of it closing again, trapping them with the blankness and their hunger and their words. The pencil that Hamilton had discovered and indeterminable time ago was long forgotten on the floor, as the men grasped at the edges of the door and burst into the light, as though it was their last lifeline on a deserted island.

  Hamilton fell to the ground, his body too weak to carry him any farther with the new panic and adrenaline rushing through him, while Jefferson stood in stunned silence, staring at the sky, the clouds, the sun, the  _ colour _ . There was no messy, spidery words, there was no crushing, endless white, there was just beautiful, pure, colour.

  For the first time since they were stolen away from the world, Hamilton and Jefferson genuinely smiled together.

 

* * *

 

**Epilogue**

It took months and months of rehabilitation to repair the mental and physical damage that the room gave the pair of Secretaries. Washington, not wanting unstable Secretaries but knowing that they’d come back full force, gave their jobs to high-functioning interns until they became stable enough to work. Eliza stayed with Hamilton every step of the way, but even after all the psychiatrists and health regulators, Hamilton couldn’t stand the thought of being left in a room by himself with the door shut, with only a pencil in his hands. James Madison went through the same supportive wave with Jefferson, the same fears and thoughts running through the latter’s head, too.

  The group of FBI agents that found the two in that little white room had also discovered James Reynolds, hanging from the ceiling of the second room by his neck, connected by a noose. Hercules Mulligan, who was part of the group, supposed that it was an almost fitting end to such a horrible man, but he would have liked to have gotten his hands on that whelp of a human being before he died.

  They also discovered all of Jefferson and Hamilton's writings. They were mostly all Hamilton’s writings, about three walls and the floor’s worth, but there was about about one wall’s worth of Jefferson’s writings too. Jefferson seemed to have at least kept his words and sentences sane, whereas Hamilton’s writings, early on, dissolved into chaotic thoughts and structures. The main point to most of them was an extreme need to leave the little white room, but the most spine-tingling thing written was the last thing Hamilton wrote, before the pair of them was let free.

  Hamilton himself had attempted to explained his psychotic writings, sometimes not being able to understand some of his own thought processes, but he understood and explained his last few writings very clearly, making it known that he would never think of doing what he’d written in the real, normal world, only in that horrible little white room with more than half his sanity lost.

_ Dear Eliz ~~a~~ beth, Bethaliz? Washer, and Burrlow. I have reason to believe my stomach has started to eat itself. I’ve started to throw up less, is that bad? They say it’s bad. The little murmurings in my head (as I’ve just discovered Thoms-J can’t hear them) have said food is essential. I need something to eat, but the only things here in this ~~dirty, wooded~~ clean, boring, metal, painted room and us, Jeffer ~~ton~~ son and myself and the fabrics along the floor that serve as water and the bathroom. I long for a proper toilet, maybe once he’s gone I can shape his bones. _

_   He’s the only other thing in here, he has food on him, I can smell it. I need something to eat. I’ve noticed his wonderfully plump muscles, isn’t that the part people eat? The muscles? When he’s asleep again, I’ll strike. Pencils are wonderful weapons, and he’s never using ours anyways. I won’t die here today, and I’ll carry him with me. We’ll live, and we’ll make it back. We'll be ~~happy~~ together. That’s what they say, anyways, they say optomistic things. If Jerrison could hear them, he’d be happy too. We’ll both see the light of day again, I will make sure of that, we’ll make it, we’ll make it, we’ll make it, we’ll[smudge] _

 

**Author's Note:**

> Alrighty, thank you everyone for reading this! This is loosely based off of the general idea of Stephen King's novel Misery. I wanted to try and write a story with essentially only two characters, and this is what came out. I hope you enjoyed it, and come scream at me in the comments, if you have anything to add, fix or generally comment about! Thank you all, and have a wonderful whatever-time-of-say-it-is-for-you!


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